


Peanut Butter and Roast Beef Sandwiches

by jdphoenix



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1789957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Boggarts love roast beef and peanut butter, you know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peanut Butter and Roast Beef Sandwiches

Ron and Hermione were too busy arguing over proper wand form to notice they were leaving Harry behind, which suited him just fine. He wasn’t in much of a mood to listen to them fight all the way down to lunch, when he’d likely be listening to them all through it as it was. Hoping to give them even more of a head start, he double checked his bag was securely shut before giving Professor Flitwick a polite nod of farewell and heading into the hall. It was already deserted, students too eager for a warm meal to dawdle the way they usually did between classes.

Harry considered pulling out the Marauder’s Map and searching for Malfoy, much preferring the idea of finally sussing out his secret to another of Ron and Hermione’s fights. If they asked him later, he’d say he was researching something for his lessons with Dumbledore. The lie would go over better than the truth.

That decided, he headed for the nearest classroom, sure it would be empty. He turned the handle on the door and heard a firm cry of, “ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” from within. There was a brief flash of pale light directly before Harry’s eyes, blinding him momentarily.

“Oh. Hello, Harry.” Though he couldn’t see her, it was most definitely Luna Lovegood. He’d know her melodious voice anywhere.

“Hi, Luna,” he said.

He side-stepped into the room, letting the door fall shut beside him. Better, he figured, to be half-blind (more so than usual, at any rate) in a room with a friend than half-blind in the hall where anyone at all might come upon him. He blinked rapidly and wiped at his eyes. His glasses pressed uncomfortably into the bridge of his nose since he hadn’t taken the time to pull them off. It was worth it though and in the time it took Luna to cast another charm, he could see as well as he ever could. Luna’s Patronus was the barest wisp of fog, fading away like a breath of warm air on a cold, winter morning.

“I’ll have it soon,” she said, seemingly undeterred. The fact settled, she turned to him again. “What are you doing here?”

He thought for a brief moment of making up a reason and was all set on doing so, but what came out of his mouth was, “I didn’t much feel like eating with Ron and Hermione today.”

Luna nodded as if she understood completely. She hopped up on the teacher’s desk and pulled from her bag two sandwich halves. Both were slightly squashed and oozing. She offered one to him.

“I brought it in case the rumors of a Boggart hiding in the cupboards were true.” She nodded to the far wall of the room and Harry found himself watching the cabinets there cautiously. “They love roast beef and peanut butter, you know. You’ll have to fight it off if there is one. I haven’t learned the charm yet.”

There was Malfoy to look for yet and, barring that, a feast waiting downstairs if he was truly hungry. There was every reason to go and leave Luna to her practice, but the thing about Luna - the oddest thing of all when it came down to it - was how utterly honest she was. The way she said it, she didn’t expect him to fight off the potential monster because he was The Boy Who Lived, she simply knew he would if it should appear. She trusted him to. Which was more than he could say for his other friends at the moment.

“Thank you,” he said. He carefully took the sandwich, trying valiantly not to look quite like he was disgusted just to touch it. Luna scooted to the side, though there was already ample room on the desk. Harry sat beside her, the sudden lurch dropping a lump of goop from the sandwich to his robes.

“ _Scourgify_ ,” Luna said before he could even begin to wonder how he’d explain the stain during his afternoon classes.

“Thank you,” Harry said again.

Luna only smiled around an over-large bite of her sandwich half. Harry held his between his hands, looking for the best angle from which to attack even while he wondered how much he had to eat for politeness’ sake.

A rustling sounded from the other side of the room. Both of them looked first at the cabinets and then at each other.

“It’s probably just someone’s pet got lost,” Harry said. Even as he said it, he handed off his sandwich to Luna and pulled out his wand. He gave her a firm look, meant to hold her in place while he investigated. She nodded, the gesture a little stilted. The trust and surety were still there, only marred a little by a fear of what might come next.

Harry navigated his way through the desks, to the corner the sound had come from. It repeated itself only once, that same, soft rustling and he was fairly sure he could hear a squeak through the wood as well. He was so certain it was someone’s pet rat that he wasn’t half-surprised when he opened the cabinet and found only the crumpled remains of some very old essays littering the floor.

“Harry?” Luna called.

“It’s all right,” he said. He squatted down and shot a _lumos_ down into the depths of the cabinets. There were no shining eyes looking back at him.

“Harry.”

“There’s nothing here,” he said a little shortly. He straightened and looked down the higher shelves, not expecting to find anything at all. “Probably Peeves was just trying to spook us and got distracted by some first years.”

Harry turned and his stomach dropped out the way it did when he pulled up from a dive without the snitch in his hand. There was a man in the middle of the room, sobbing into his hands. He made no noise, but each breath shook his frail shoulders so much that it seemed a miracle he hadn’t cried himself to pieces. There was no way to see his face but his wild, white hair was so much like Luna’s, it was little trouble to guess who he might be. She stared down at him, eyes wider than Harry had ever seen and face white as a sheet. Despite all that, she seemed strangely calm, as if even the sight of her greatest fear could not rob Luna completely of her usual serenity.

Harry gave the Boggart a wide berth and returned to her side. “Your father?” he asked gently.

Luna nodded once, slowly. “I’m dead.”

That took Harry aback. He actually half-stepped away at the words. Luna’s eyes weren’t quite so wide anymore. She looked almost sad, really.

“He never really recovered, you see, from my mother dying. He has his work of course but it’s not the same as having someone to love and love you back.” She tore her eyes from the Boggart and smiled a little wetly at Harry. “If I died, he’d be all alone.”

Harry didn’t have much experience with crying girls and what little he had was only enough to tell him what _not_ to do, leaving quite a lot of possibilities open to him, most of which were undoubtedly wrong. Instead of trying to cheer her up, he did something he knew he was good at.

“Want to practice your Patronus again?” he asked.

Luna blinked once and Harry took supreme pride in having shocked her. She nodded, this time more animatedly, and hopped off the desk when Harry indicated she should. The sandwiches, she set to one side as she pulled her wand out.

Once he was sure she was steady, Harry stepped forward. He was nearly upon the imposter Mr. Lovegood when it finally noticed him. In a second it was in the air, a great swath of black that made the sunlight dim and the walls bend close.

“Now would be good,” Harry said, his voice pitched loud to drown out the distant screaming.

He didn’t hear Luna, but he knew she spoke by the wisp of white that flew over his shoulder. It drove the Dementor-Boggart back, allowing Harry a chance to breathe.

“Good,” he said, grateful for Luna’s hand at his shoulder. “Really good. Now try again. Something happier.”

It was coming back at them, sweeping low and leaving a thin layer of condensation over the desks in its wake. This time he did hear Luna’s shout and he could see what might’ve been a paw kicking off as her Patronus sprung from her wand. The Dementor-Boggart veered so that the Patronus only sent it spinning to the side this time. Harry threw his arms around Luna, pushing her down as the creature passed them by. Desks around them rattled. The air felt chill on Harry’s exposed face and arms, like a burst of harsh winter. It clung to them and he felt it in the weave of Luna’s robes when he gripped her shoulders to keep her steady. The noise stopped - the rattling of desks as well as the screaming - and was replaced by a faint slurping, squelching noise that reminded Harry of a Muggle horror film he’d once seen. It was coming from the front of the room.

Again he gave Luna the look meant to keep her in place while he investigated. She didn’t seem to mind being left in the middle of the room, amid a sea of askew desks. Harry walked carefully to the side of the teacher’s desk and leaned around to get a look at what was hidden underneath. What he saw curled up beneath the desk was a familiar site: Dudley, face and hands covered in food as he gobbled even more down. The Boggart sneered at Harry, but could not be bothered to pull itself away from Luna’s beef and peanut butter sandwiches.

“I’m so glad he likes them,” Luna said. She stood at Harry’s elbow, no longer in the least afraid of the Boggart. “What is he?”

Harry only smiled at her, glad as he ever was to be in a part of the world where no one knew about Dudley Dursley. It was, all in all, a far better lunch than either of Harry’s original prospects. That, coupled with Luna’s sheer Luna-ness, was perhaps why Harry did what he did next. One moment he was thinking about all of it - the simple joy of being in the wizarding world, the fun of a good adventure, Luna - and the next he was kissing her.

She kissed him back far more readily than he would have imagined, rising on her toes to more firmly press her lips to his. His hands found the curve of her waist beneath her robes and he had not realized before how good it could feel to hold another person, how right and perfectly shaped that few inches of flesh could feel in his hands. It was a wonderful discovery, so he was understandably let down when Luna pulled away. He would have been completely embarrassed by the lost expression on his face if he had been presented with a mirror, but all he had was Luna’s smile, which was at least enough to let him know he hadn’t utterly botched things.

Without missing a beat, Luna raised her wand and said a simple, heartfelt, “ _Expecto patronum_.” A hare burst from the end of her wand, bright and fully formed. It hopped from desk to desk and off the walls, made a detour into the Boggart’s makeshift cave, and ran along the windows until it disappeared in the bright sunlight.

Luna nodded in a self-satisfied way that Harry could not think was over-proud.

“Now I really should learn to fend off a Boggart,” she said sincerely. There was an unhappy noise from beneath the teacher’s desk. “Or, I suppose, how to turn one into a Dementor.”

“You don’t think you need a little more work on your Patronus?” Harry asked. It was, perhaps, the dumbest thing he had ever said. The Boggart agreed. He could hear Dudley’s scoff around a bite of roast beef.

“I suppose so,” Luna said. “But if it’s only kissing you’re after, I’d rather not do it in front of the Boggart.”

The school echoed with the sound of bells warning it was nearly time for afternoon lessons. Luna grabbed up her bag and Harry’s as well. She held his out to him and he couldn’t help but wish he was reaching for her again instead. But Luna was on her way to the door, in a hurry to get to her next class.

“Would you like to practice at lunch again tomorrow?” she asked. “The old History classroom on the third floor?”

“Sure,” Harry said. He winced at the sound of his own voice. Had he ever sounded so glum before?

Luna practically danced out the door. Before it closed completely her head leaned back into his view.

“And, Harry?”

She waited patiently for him to respond and he had a vision of the rest of her in the hall, standing on one foot, the other lifted high to balance her weight. He could hear other students passing by and quickly came to attention, feeling guilty for letting his own foul mood turn her into the butt of other students’ jokes.

“Yeah, Luna?”

“We don’t have to practice the Patronus charm or Boggarts. We can practice anything you like.”

She smiled and left. Harry stayed a few moments more, sure his own Patronus at the moment could light up the Great Hall.


End file.
